Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Christian Perspective on Sex | New Testament | 1 Corinthians 7

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. How should Christians think about sex? How should they think about sex outside of marriage? This is an important question because our culture is sex obsessed. We live downstream from Freud, so we all have this intuitive sense that sex is fundamental to our psychology. A sexless life would be a deeply unsatisfying life. That's why we have comedies like 40-year-old virgin.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Being a virgin at 40 is funny to us because it's sad to us. In our moment, sex is a matter of self-expression and personal fulfillment. The only rule is that you just have to have consent. As long as you have consent, a happy, full life should include having the sex you want with whoever you want. If you resist your consensual urges, then you're repressing yourself. You're submerging something deep inside yourself and that submersion could eventually come back to haunt you. This is because sex is at the core. of who we are in the modern world. Your sexual desires and orientations are increasingly definitional

Starting point is 00:01:10 for your personhood. Let me try to summarize this. Sex is a constant conversation for us moderns. Sex is what defines us. Sex is what satisfies us. Sex is how we expressed our deepest, truest self. Put differently, sex is an idol. And in our culture, the idol of sex doesn't serve the purposes that ancient sex cults served. No, those ancient sex cults, they were more about fertility and having children. Note today, our modern sex cult is about self-expression and self-fulfillment. Do you see any echoes of yourself in that description? I think we all do because this is the water that we swim in. In Corinth, they swam in polluted sexual waters as well, but those waters were different. Again, sex in the ancient world was more about male domination and satisfaction. It was also about

Starting point is 00:01:57 men having progeny, children. So men were allowed to be self-expressive in sex, but this was often an expression of patriarchal domination. The leader of the household could sleep with whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted. But this didn't mean that women were powerless. A patriarch's wife often found ways to subvert her husband, whether that was sleeping around with other men or refusing him sex that he demanded. Nearly everyone in the ancient world would have thought of singleness as a curse, because just like today, a sexless life was a curse. Now, it's not because a sexless life was an unfulfilled life, but because having no children meant you'd end your life without a legacy and without a family line. In other words, sex in the ancient world was as broken, misguided, abusive, and

Starting point is 00:02:41 destructive as it is in the modern world, though in different ways. So enter Paul, who allowed the cross of Jesus to rewrite his vision of sex. If the son of God came to earth to lay down his life sacrificially in love for his bride, he was the anti-patriarch. He didn't demand. He didn't take. No, Jesus gave and Jesus died. This idea of mutuality and self-sacrifice shaped Paul's vision of sex. In the ideal, he imagines married couples giving their bodies to one another in love. Let's pick up in 1st Corinthians 7, verse 2. Each man should have sexual relations with his own wife and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital. duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife doesn't have authority over

Starting point is 00:03:29 her own body, but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband doesn't have authority over his own body, but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then, come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. The real shocker in this verse isn't that a wife doesn't have authority over her body. Again, in the patriarchal universe of Rome, that was a given. The shockers that Paul says a husband doesn't have authority over his own body, but yields his authority to his wife. This is the seabed of sexual consent, and I think that we all take for granted today. The idea that a husband's chief duty is giving to his wife, not taking from her.

Starting point is 00:04:14 That's a clear statement that he and all men in a patriarchal society have no right to take take sex as they please. To the contrary, sex is a gift from both partners, which can only be offered freely and received with gratitude. This, again, is designed to point us to Jesus, who lay down his life freely for us as a gift, in which we receive with gratitude. Sex isn't about the self. It isn't about self-expression or even self-fulfillment. Sex is not to be an idol that defines you, obsesses you, or satisfies you. Sex is a signpost that's supposed to point you to Jesus, Sex is about the other, about self-giving, about other satisfaction. Sex is a picture of Jesus' own grace and mercy to us,

Starting point is 00:04:59 which is exactly why sex should only happen in the covenant of marriage. Just as Jesus gives his most intimate love to us covenantally, in the same way, we only give ourselves sexually within a covenantal union. Anything less is taking, grasping, stealing from the other. It's not self-giving, it's self-satisfaction. But what about singleness? well because sex is not the center of the kingdom of god a sexless life is not a joke it's not unfulfilling you can give yourself in a life without sex or with sex which is why paul who by the way

Starting point is 00:05:32 was single himself goes on to say that singleness is actually superior to marriage that would have been shocking in the ancient world and it would be shocking to our world that thinks you have to have sex to be happy second corinthian seven verse seven i wish that all of you were as i am in other words single but each of you has your own gift from God. One has this gift, another has that. Let's go to verse 8. Now, to the unmarried and the widows, I say, it is good for them to say unmarried as I do.

Starting point is 00:05:59 He continues this in verse 32. I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs, how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world, how he can please his wife, and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about, the Lord's affairs. Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman

Starting point is 00:06:24 is concerned about the affairs of this world, how she can please her husband. I'm saying this to you for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way, an undivided devotion to the Lord. You see, whether you're married and having sex or not married and practicing chastity, you both have the exact same calling to lay down your life for others. And Paul is right, Those who are not married can be more fixated on the sacrificial giving that God calls us to in his kingdom. So don't buy into the modern sex cult of our era. Don't buy into the lie that sex is definitional or necessary for a good life. No, I want you to realize this, that in all of life we are called to give ourselves, not express ourselves, whether we're married or we're single.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's, It's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Christian Perspective on Sex | New Testament | 1 Corinthians 7

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